The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), the Federal Reserve Board, and the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency ("the agencies") today are making public the host state loan-to-deposit ratios that the agencies will use to determine compliance with section 109 of the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 (Interstate Act). Section 109 of the Interstate Act prohibits a bank from establishing or acquiring a branch or branches outside of its home state under the Interstate Act primarily for the purpose of deposit production.

Section 109 provides a two-step process to test compliance with the statutory requirements. The first step involves a loan-to-deposit ratio screen that compares a bank's statewide loan-to-deposit ratio to the host state loan-to-deposit ratio for a particular state. If the bank's statewide loan-to-deposit ratio in a state is at least one-half of the published host state loan-to-deposit ratio for that state, the bank has complied with section 109. If the bank's ratio is less than one-half, the second step in section 109 requires the agencies to determine if the bank is reasonably helping to meet the credit needs of the communities served by the bank. A bank that fails both steps is in violation of section 109 and subject to sanctions by the agencies.

The agencies will update the host state loan-to-deposit ratios on an annual basis.

Due to the legislative intent against imposing regulatory burden, no
additional data were collected from the institutions to implement section
109. However, since insufficient lending data were available on a geographic
basis to calculate the statewide ratios directly, the agencies used
a proxy to estimate the host state loan-to-deposit ratio. The agencies
calculated the host state loan-to-deposit ratios using data obtained
from the Call Reports and Summary of Deposits reports, as of June 30,
1997. For each home state bank, the agencies calculated the percentage
of the bank's total deposits attributable to branches located in its
home state (determined from the Summary of Deposits), and applied this
percentage to the bank's total domestic loans (determined from the Call
Report) to estimate the amount of loans attributable to the home state.
The host state loan-to-deposit ratio was then calculated by separately
totaling the loans and deposits for the home state banks, and then dividing
the sum of the loans by the sum of the deposits. Banks designated as
limited purpose or wholesale banks under the Community Reinvestment
Act (CRA) were excluded from the host state loan-to-deposit calculation,
recognizing that these banks could have very large loan portfolios,
but few, if any, deposits. Credit card banks, which typically have large
loan portfolios but few deposits, were also excluded, regardless of
whether they had a limited purpose CRA-designation.

The host state loan-to-deposit ratios, and any changes in the way the
ratio is calculated, will be made publicly available on an annual basis.